I should have been blind after stroke – Roebuck

Ellie Roebuck, the England and Barcelona goalkeeper, appears to be a player with the world’s attention as she sips her flat white in the Spanish sunshine outside her favorite coffee shop.

However, the image is significantly different from what it was twelve months ago.

She was informed last February that she had suffered a stroke and that she had feared she would never play football again after she was 24.

“I’m lucky because I should have lost my vision”, she tells BBC Sport. My peripheral vision should have definitely gone away. The majority of people that suffer a stroke]like mine] do that. So, I probably should have been blind, which is quite a miracle that that didn’t happen”.

Roebuck was a member of the Lionesses’ squad that won the 2022 Euros and advanced to the 2023 Summer Olympics. However, the ex-Manchester City keeper had no idea that her world would turn around six months after that Sydney match.

Roebuck’s season at Manchester City, which she had been playing for since she was 15 and made her debut as a teenager in 2016, did not go as planned after returning from World Cup duty in Australia.

The Sheffield-born keeper was struggling off the pitch and found herself stranded with the first team, failing to make an appearance in the first half of the season.

Roebuck initially began to feel like something was “not quite right” around Christmas 2023, despite her inability to identify what it was.

She felt nauseous, dizzy, fatigued, a bit off balance and her eyesight started to be affected with black dots impairing her vision.

A ball had hit the back of her head in training, nothing unusual for a goalkeeper, so her symptoms were put down to that.

Roebuck knew it had to be something else as the year went on, but she received treatment for a concussion at her club.

“I knew it wasn’t concussion”, she said. “I’ve had concussion. I just knew something wasn’t right. Something is wrong and I know it, so I said, “I need a head scan for my peace of mind because it’s necessary.”

She was aware that the club doctor had called her shortly after the scan, and that this was not going to be good news.

“It filled me with panic, but I never had in my mind that it was a stroke.

” He sat me down and was like, ‘ you’ve had an infarct in your left occipital lobe’. I asked ‘ what’s that in English? ‘ And then he said it was a type of stroke. “

When a portion of the brain receives too much blood, it has a stroke. That can lead to paralysis and in some cases, death. A stroke in the area of the brain known as the occipital lobe can result in a variety of visual impairments.

No one could have given her an answer at the time, and the diagnosis came just two weeks after she officially announced her exit from Manchester City by signing a pre-contract with Barcelona before moving to Barcelona in the summer.

She soon realized that her worries extended far beyond football, and she was immediately whisked away for an accident and an emergency medical visit.

” I was sat in A&amp, E with all the people on a Thursday night that’d been out drinking. They’d come in with their cuts and bruises and I was just sat there]thinking] ‘ what is happening? ‘ Then, something I’d never really want to remember happened: I was taken to the stroke unit.

You are there with older people who I perceived to be “normal people” who had strokes. It was just a crazy experience”.

There was little the hospital could do because her stroke appeared to have occurred three to four weeks earlier, so she was taken home that night.

“The nurses said you can’t carry shopping for six weeks. You can’t do any exercise. I thought, ‘ I’m a professional footballer, I can’t do that'”.

Roebuck spent 12 weeks without any training, was forced to pick up the pieces while attempting to determine what had caused the stroke and was constantly worried it would occur again.

“I wouldn’t walk my dog for like six weeks. I wouldn’t leave the house. I was hesitant to attempt anything alone. And that was never me, I was always super independent. My one-bedroom apartment in Manchester had two people living with me during shifts.

She had numerous tests to determine what had happened, and eventually a tiny hole in her heart was discovered.

Although it sounds crazy, I was relieved that I had a reason for believing that my heart had a hole, and that it could be filled so that I could move on. I almost looked up when I had heart surgery.

A membrane had formed and doctors believed it had closed by itself, which caused Roebuck to become frustrated once more because it made it impossible for her to fully comprehend what caused her stroke after the hole was discovered during surgery.

Roebuck initially kept her team-mates informed of her condition after her dream move to European heavyweights Barcelona was on the line.

She acknowledges it was lonely, but she was helped by two sportspeople who have had similar experiences.

One was NFL Superbowl winner Tedy Bruschi, who had two strokes during his career. Petr Cech, a former Chelsea goalkeeper, also suffered a serious head injury in a 2006 game.

He and I had a phone call over the course of two hours, which was amazing. Although it wasn’t exactly the same, I could feel someone going through the same thing.

He “touched matters that no one else could.” No matter how many times I tried to express myself, I couldn’t. Nobody could understand what I was experiencing.

After having a stroke, Roebuck was unable to play for Manchester City again, but she managed to make the summer move to Barcelona.

She claims that her confidence was “diminished” after her final season was handled at a club where she made more than 100 appearances.

“I just felt like maybe my relationship with the manager]Gareth Taylor] got fractured.

” I don’t know whether that was me, maybe not hearing the clear communication or the fact that there just wasn’t clear communication.

“I put my head down, and I’ve been trying to work every day,” he said. I’ve always been professional. Simply put, I thought that the respect didn’t get reciprocated in the same way.

Roebuck says that while she was “devastated” to leave City, it made joining Barcelona, who have won three of the last four Champions League titles, a very easy decision.

She acknowledges, however, that her first training session with the club six months after leaving was much more challenging than she had anticipated.

“After coming back from having a brain injury and then saying you’ve got to dive at someone’s feet, it’s not the prettiest. But I had to endure it.

More important than anyone saying you can play a starting role, Barcelona showed trust in me and in me. They wanted me, they wanted me, and they wanted to improve me because they showed confidence in me.

“The girls are amazing. The top three Ballon d’Or winners are all in this changing room, which shocked me because of how kind everyone was. Other than the England team, there is no other team like this I have ever played for.

” So, for me it’s a perfect fit and I enjoy going in every day. “

Now 25, Roebuck made her Barca debut in December in a 4-1 win over Real Betis, 303 days after her diagnosis and more than 18 months since her last appearance.

Roebuck claims that she is very focused on the future despite having symptoms like fatigue and daily thinking about the stroke. Additionally, her coffee bean roasting business is now included in that.

I think life is worth so much more. I was conditioned to believe that football was everything.

“And I think for that period of time where I didn’t know if I could be a footballer, it made me realise, you have to find something else. And that was challenging because Ellie the footballer was everything to me.

It was just a great way to channel my energy and keep that focus so I could focus on what I was doing when I wasn’t sure if I was going to play again. It’s the ideal starting point, and it’s likely to lead to the opening of a coffee shop someday.

“I’ve almost recovered from my biggest challenge, becoming a normal person once more,” he said.

Roebuck, who has 11 England caps, says representing the Lionesses has always been the “highest privilege” in her career but that her comeback may have come too late for a recall in time for this summer’s Euros.

“It’s difficult because that’s something that’s not in my hands as such. Nothing is given. I know that’s not an easy journey. And I know that I need to be playing consistently week in, week out, but for me it’s more than that, it’s a journey that I’m on.